Collections Manager offers a much more flexible way than the built-in one to manage Kindle Touch and Kindle PaperWhite collections.

Here's an (old) screenshot of what it looks like on a Kindle Touch with Firmware 5.1.x; the second picture is annotated with descriptions. The third picture shows the new entry format on a Kindle Paperwhite with Firmware 5.3.x, using the russian localization.

Kindle Paperwhite: Firmware 5.2.0 - 5.4.4.2 (ATTENTION: See the note about FW >= 5.4.2 on the next line!)

Kindle Paperwhite 2: Firmware 5.4.0 - 5.4.2.1 & 5.4.3.1 - 5.4.5.1 & 5.6.5 (ATTENTION: On FW 5.4.0, everything works correctly. However, starting with FW 5.4.2, not all of the functionality is working correctly. See this, this, and most importantly THIS post for details).

The registration status of your Kindle has changed, because that removes all developer certificates.

The firmware was updated.

Localization:

Spoiler:

Starting with version 1.1.2, this program can be localized. If you want to have the program display something else than the default english texts, download this file and save it as "CollectionsManager-localization.txt" on the Kindle. More instructions are contained in the file itself.

If you have created or updated the localization for a particular language, feel free to post it - I will either update the localization file (if the Kindle supports the language out-of-the-box), or make the translation available from this post (if the Kindle doesn't natively support the language).

Languages that should work out of the box on the Kindle if the localization file is available (incomplete translations are marked with "(~)"):

english

french (NiLuJe)

german (diba, ixtab)

italian (Mterry)(~)

portuguese (zamana, denydias)

spanish (cristbo, coolpable)(~)

The latest revision date of the official (=committed to the repository) localizations is 2014-01-30.

"Unofficial" support for other languages (these must replace the english texts) -- I can't guarantee anything for these translations, but I'll at least try to update this post to point to all of the contributions that were posted in this thread):

The Export function exports all collections which contain at least one "normal" item. However, it does not export the collection hierarchy (because Calibre does not support that).

The Import function will never remove collections; it will only update existing collections, or create new ones (visible in home by default). In particular, this means that after deleting collections from Calibre, you may also have to manually delete these collections from the Kindle.

Calibre Synchronization will never change the collection hierarchy, or the visibility of existing items. This applies to both import and export.

Other Notes:

To see which collections an item is contained in, either long-click it, or click on the indicator shown at the right.

Swipe up or down to "synchronize" the collections that are shown.

When using the "Create Collection" button, the newly created collection will be placed in the collection which is showing in the top pane.

Collection names must be unique. In other words: you can't have two collections with the same name. If you try to create a collection with a name that already exists, or try to rename a collection so that its name would conflict with another one, the operation will silently fail.

Fun fact 1: you can create infinite recursions, by including collection A in B and B in A

Fun fact 2: There is a little easter egg in the program which is triggered when you try to hide Collections Manager itself from the home screen and it (CM) hasn't been put into any collection. Try it out!

To integrate Collections Manager with the GUI Launcher or KUAL, and/or to actually hide Collections Manager from the Home Screen, see this post. Note that the launcher script has to be edited to use the correct filename (CollectionsManager.azw2, not KTCollectionsManager.azw2).

On 5.1.x Firmwares, the search bar disappears if the device enters sleep mode and wakes up again. There is no known workaround, but you could just actually use the device, so that it doesn't enter sleep mode ... or simply restart the application.

On *some*firmwares >= 5.2.0, the search functionality is not available.

On Firmwares >= 5.4.2, some functionality is unavailable (cf. the section about supported FW), and trying to maintain CM collections through the framework's UI instead of CM may lead to a soft deadlock.

License, Redistribution and Links:
Collections Manager is released as Free and Open Source Software, under the terms of the Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License. You are free to share all Collections Manager files in whichever way you want. However, note that the links provided here are not necessarily stable. In other words: do not distribute direct download links to the files, but link to this post instead.

If you like Collections Manager:
I sincerely hope that you find this program useful. If you like the enhancements that it offers to your Kindle experience, you are more than welcome to donate a little something... but don't give your money to me. Please donate for a much more important cause, namely: for a Literacy project in Laos. You will make not only me happy. Thank you!

NEWER VERSIONS

As I'm not regularly updating this post anymore, it can be difficult to find versions that support newer firmwares (they're attached to various posts in this thread). Here's a wiki page that attempts to provide the downloads in one place. Please edit that page whenever you add a new version -- thanks!

Awesome! Would an import/export feature be doable? Preferably in the 'usual' json collection format, that would make it able to be used with the calibre kindle collections plug in with a few tweaks ;-).

I'd take a look at the sources, but the git repo is private on bb ;-).

Awesome! Would an import/export feature be doable? Preferably in the 'usual' json collection format, that would make it able to be used with the calibre kindle collections plug in with a few tweaks ;-).

Hmmm... it sure is possible somehow. The problem is that physical entries (i.e., document files, and their sidecar entries) are an entirely different story again, and need to be treated completely differerently than collections. For instance, there is the full-text index, which indexes physical files.

While I did think about a whether a "two-way synchronization" could be done (and would have implemented it if it were sure to work), there is a reason why I only created an "import", but not an "export" feature: collections are completely "virtual", in the sense that they don't impact the file system in any way.
Providing an equivalent "export" option (sort of the "inverse function" of the import option) would modify files and directories all over the place, potentially leading to a complete misbehaviour of the Kindle (yes, I've seen it happen, by simply creating 1000 text files inside the documents folder).

Importing or exporting JSON is, of course, no problem at all. The problem is that changes to the filesystem (may) have a big impact on other components that I'm currently unable to control -- in fact, I don't even know which components are really involved.

Quote:

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

I'd take a look at the sources, but the git repo is private on bb ;-).

I was thinking specifically of importing/exporting just a simple json representation of the collections db, preferably in the same format used on previous Kindles (which is, AFAIU, still used on the Touch, only meshed with a sqlite db), not of reorganizing the documents FS layout to match the collections db . But since I have no idea how the Java side of this thing works, I'm not sure if/how it's possible . I'm guessing there should be something of the sort available, since it's more or less what the 'Import Collections From Another Device' vanilla feature does, I think, albeit maybe in XML instead of JSON (cf. KSP)...